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Show + Tell: Hannah Henderson of General Store

Just meeting Hannah Henderson, co-owner of Los Angeles’s General Store, had us wanting to breathe deeper, go for long walks and wear even more denim than we already do—there’s something just so unhurried and laid-back about her. We spent a morning at her Venice Beach home and then cruised over to General Store in her navy blue Defender in an attempt to absorb some of that relaxed attitude (and style, of course). Her unflinching piece of style advice? “Wear your clothes. I used to buy precious things and save them, but they only ever saw the inside of my closet. Now I buy carefully and wear my favorite pieces no matter where I’m going.” What’s made the cut? Denim, in all forms, simple T-shirts and unembellished dresses. Some may say this lean toward comfy basics was part of her upbringing: “I wasn’t allowed to wear synthetic fabrics, so I grew up wearing only cotton.” Raised in Phoenix in the 1990s, her peers didn’t quite “get” her bohemian style and she learned not to care what others thought. “It was a great lesson,” she says. Now, it just so happens people care very much what she thinks, and her taste has grown the Los Angeles-based General Store to a must-visit shopping destination. She and her business partner Serena Mitnik-Miller have sparingly filled the whitewashed shop with an assortment of books, ceramic objets, delicate jewelry, vintage clothing and lush plants. In fact, the bright green leaves are some of the most colorful pieces in the shop, which adheres to a hand-touched, pared-down sensibility. “I take it slow and make sure we have integrity. You can sense the difference in things that are handmade. You can tell when a vintage piece has lived many lives.” Outside the store, her creativity extends to her own home—where she lives with her partner and children. “It’s small and sunny, and it’s really a product of me sneaking my hippie stuff into our modern space slowly enough that my man doesn’t notice!” It’s worked—pillows serve as seating on the floor, and eclectic artwork from flea markets and artist friends like Mike Pare and Kyle Field cover the walls from floor to ceiling. The bungalow’s cozy corners, draped with textiles from Etsy, provide ample opportunity to curl up, put on a record and read the morning paper. It’s exactly the type of dwelling we’d expect from the person who finds pleasure in letting life unfold instead of forcing it to happen. “Fill your house with things that have some soul, decorate for no one but yourself and put something good out into the world.”